Privacy notice

Who is responsible

Scale Chapter, a Scaletrics company. This notice covers this website – www.scalechapter.com – and the enquiry form on it. It does not cover the contract we would sign if you became a client; that agreement governs how we handle data inside your advertising accounts and takes precedence over anything here.

For anything in this notice, write to us at the address at the foot of this page.

What you send us

If you use the enquiry form, we collect:

• Your name and email address
• Your company, and your website if you give it
• An approximate monthly ad-spend band
• Whatever you write in the message box
• Which page, link or ad brought you to the form – and, if you allowed cookies, your earlier visits to this site

What we record as you read

We measure which pages people read, on our own servers, into our own database. It is never sold, never shared, and never sent to an advertising network.

Be clear about one thing, because most sites word it the other way: the count itself is not switched off by declining the cookie banner. The banner controls third-party advertising tags. Our own first-party measurement counts every visit, because measuring only the people who accept cookies means measuring a biased slice and calling it the total. What declining does change is what we keep about you: no IP address, no browser string, no cookie – only an anonymous count under a pseudonym that is regenerated every 24 hours and cannot be connected to you the next day. What we record if you accept:

• Which pages you opened, in what order, how long each was on screen and how far down you read
• Where you arrived from – a search engine, a link, or an ad – and your country, browser and device
• Your IP address, masked to its network – the last part is removed before it is stored – and your browser user-agent string
• A first-party cookie holding a random identifier, so a returning reader can be told from a new one

Cookies

Three of our own, read by nothing but this site. The analytics and advertising tools in the next section set their own, and only if you allow them.

• sct_vid – a random visitor identifier, kept for one year. Not linked to your name unless you later send us the form.
• sc_lang – remembers which language you chose, kept for one year, so we never override your choice.
• sct_cookie_consent – remembers how you answered the banner.

Analytics and advertising tools

These load only if you allow them on the cookie banner, and stop as soon as you withdraw that with Cookie settings at the foot of every page. They tell us which of our ads led to a message or a booked call, so we can stop paying for the ones that do not work.

When you send the form or book a call, these tools are told that it happened, with a reference number. They are not sent your name, your email address or what you wrote.

• Google Analytics (Google Ireland Limited) – which pages were read and whether a message or a booking followed. Cookies: _ga and _ga_*, kept for up to two years.

The lawful basis is your consent, given on the banner. Withdraw it at any time and they stop loading straight away; refusing costs you nothing on this site.

Why we have it, and on what basis

Your enquiry: to reply to it, to prepare whatever you asked for, and to carry on that conversation. Nothing else. The lawful basis is legitimate interests – answering somebody who has deliberately contacted a business about its services. You can object at any time and we stop.

The measurement: legitimate interests in understanding which pages are worth writing more of. Our own measurement builds no advertising profile and is never sold or shared; the analytics and advertising tools above run only on your consent.

We will not add you to a mailing list. If we ever want to send you something unrelated to your enquiry, we will ask first.

Who else sees it

Scale Chapter is a Scaletrics company, and this site runs on shared systems with our parent. In practice your enquiry is delivered and stored by Scaletrics’ systems and read by the Scale Chapter team. It is used only to answer you.

Beyond that the only third parties are the suppliers who run the plumbing – our web host, and the email provider that delivers our notification and your confirmation – who process it on our instructions and for no purpose of their own; and, only if you allow them on the banner, the analytics and advertising tools named above.

How long we keep it

Reading history is deleted after twelve months. That is enforced by a scheduled job, not by intention.

Enquiries are kept while we are answering you and for as long as the conversation is live. If you do not become a client and you ask us to delete it, we delete it. Enquiries that turn into client relationships are kept for as long as the relationship lasts and for the period our accounting and tax obligations require afterwards.

Where it is held

Our suppliers may process data outside the UK and EEA. Where they do, the transfer is covered by the safeguards those suppliers have in place – standard contractual clauses or an adequacy decision. Ask us and we will tell you which supplier handles what.

Your rights

You can ask us to:

• tell you what we hold about you, and give you a copy
• correct anything that is wrong
• delete it
• stop using it, or restrict what we do with it
• send it to you or to someone else in a portable form

How to have it deleted

Write to the address at the foot of this page. We action it within one month and there is no charge. Deletion is a real deletion, not a flag.

If you think we have handled your data badly, please tell us first so we can fix it. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

Changes

If this notice changes materially we will update the date at the top. It is worth re-reading if you are about to send us something.